


although I do not hope to turn

by lastinthebox



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Character Death, Community: avengerkink, Dark Steve, F/M, Graphic Violence, M/M, Villain Steve, non-explicit het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-20 23:44:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastinthebox/pseuds/lastinthebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve learns when you've lost so much, it becomes quite easy to lose yourself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	although I do not hope to turn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).
  * Translation into Tiếng Việt available: [although I do not hope to turn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3224072) by [thegirl_gcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl_gcat/pseuds/thegirl_gcat)



> The prompt that inspired this fic can be found [here](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19994.html?thread=47839258#t47839258) or in the footer notes. If you're iffy on major character death and/or graphic violence, I suggest you take a look before pressing ahead.

 

::

 

Sam blocks the doorway, one hand on the doorknob, the other clamped over his nose and mouth.

“Steve, man, don’t,” he begs.

And there’s frost on Sam’s gloves, and Steve feels the cold to his very bones, and this is how it starts. This is where it all begins: in a warehouse in Kiev in the November snow.

 

::

 

_‘There was a girl the other day,’ his mother tells him. ‘There was a girl who jumped from the Bridge.’_

_‘But why?’ Steve asks._

_‘Because she was sad,’ his mother replies. ‘She was sad because her love died, and she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone, so she decided she wanted to fly. And the girl wasn’t thinking about dying. She was thinking about living. And the girl thought if she could just fly, she could be with her love again. So she jumped.’_

 

::

 

A warm hand grips his shoulder, a gentle voice saying _stay_ as Sam takes a call from Natasha (probably) and moves away. Steve looks up at the broken window panes, follows the snow drifts through the air with dry, itching eyes. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been waiting for her. Hours maybe, or is it days? He supposes it doesn’t matter. Time means nothing to a dead man, and the body will keep a while longer in the cold.

So he sits and he waits and watches as dusk gives way to dawn.

 

::

 

Natasha is not with them, until Steve dimly realizes that she is. She’s speaking softly, under her breath and into Sam’s ear, saying things Steve knows he’s not supposed to hear. Things like _has Rogers moved at all_ and _I don’t care, we need to move now_ and _we can’t let that locator chip go online_ and _we’re going to need to burn the body_.

 

::

 

Sam carries the body to a rusted Vauxhall out back, Natasha pulls accelerant out of her bag, and Steve lights the match.

He feels like screaming, but thinks he prays.

 

::

 

“At least it was quick,” she tells him, like it’s some kind of comfort, like it’s something Steve should be grateful for.

And maybe he should, in this line of work.

 

::

 

They boost a station wagon outside a supermarket, and they’re on the road by sundown. Natasha takes the first shift, and Steve watches in the side view mirror as Sam drifts off against the door. It’s with a dull sense of horror he notices there’s a smudge of white ash on Sam’s cheek.

“It’s a long drive to Odessa,” Natasha says. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“Volgograd.” His voice is wrecked and broken by disuse, dehydration, by not screaming and praying instead. He clears his throat and looks away to avoid her judgmental glare.

“And the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know,” because he doesn’t. “Volgograd, maybe.”

“Jesus, Rogers.” She takes a hand off the wheel and reaches into her pocket, thrusts a packet of airline peanuts into his chest. “Eat. Go to sleep. I’ll wake you up when we stop for gas. _Stupid_.”

“I’m not that hungry. I’m okay.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Natasha snaps after a beat. “Eat the fucking peanuts. Go the fuck to sleep.”

 

::

 

Natasha wipes her face on her sleeve when she thinks Steve isn’t watching.

He doesn’t sleep.

 

::

 

They pull into a service station sometime around midnight.

Natasha tops off the tank and walks into the shop, brings out some clear fish broth and thick buttered bread. They huddle around the cooling engine and pick at their food. Then Sam wanders off toward the facilities, Natasha calls Fury (probably), and Steve barely makes it over the muddied snowbank and to the tree line before he’s vomiting up the meal.

He heaves and heaves until he can’t anymore, wipes at his hot face, cups his hand around some snow and bites into the mound. It’s gritty and sour on his tongue, unclean. There’s a greasy burn deep in his stomach, something he hasn’t felt since before, before when he was a different man, a sickly man, before when he still had Bu—but no, no, that doesn’t matter, does it?

He stumbles back to the car and slips behind the wheel, ignores Sam’s pointed looks and drives and drives and drives into the night.

 

::

 

The closer they come to Odessa, the closer they get to the promise of home, the more that burn spreads. Spreads through his stomach like acid, into his lungs, up his throat, into his heart. And Steve realizes numbly this is not sickness he feels. This is anger. Vile and hateful and consuming rage. And it’s so intense he feels he could choke on it, drown in it, die from it.

Because this is not fair.

This is not right.

This is not how it’s supposed to _be_.

 

::

 

There’s an ugly desperation in Sam’s voice as he begs Steve to _just come on man let’s go it’s over cap doing this won’t bring him back okay_.

There’s a dangerous edge to Natasha’s thin smile as she grasps Steve’s hand and presses her face into the crook of his neck and tells him, out of Sam’s earshot, there’s a man named Yazov in Constanța he needs to see, and a ghost in Afghanistan he needs to kill. Then she lifts his phone from his pocket, lobs it into the Black Sea, rips a hidden tracker from the liner in his rucksack and crushes it neatly under her heel. She tells him _call if you need me_ and _be careful_ and _don’t lose yourself_.

There’s a ship in the port of Odessa bound for Turkey.

He does not get on it.

 

::

 

_‘And she died, huh.’_

_‘Worse,’ his mother says. ‘She lived.’_

_‘I don’t understand,’ Steve says, feeling like crying but not knowing why._

_‘I know, my love, I know.’_

 

::

 

Yazov’s brothel sits only a few streets away from the airport. The front is a twenty-four hour barbers, crude but clever, and the smell of smoke and cheap perfume wafts in from the restricted access at the back. A portly, balding man is perched on a threadbare sofa by the back door, reading a Romani paper. “The Widow said you were coming, but not how fast,” the man says. He licks a finger and turns the page, seemingly unconcerned.

“The Widow said you could help me.”

“Ha! She said that, did she?” The man folds his paper down slightly and peers at Steve through coke-bottle glasses.

“I have money. Cash. Forty thousand.”

“American cash,” Yazov says slowly, as if speaking to a child. “What am I to do with that, hmm? Take it to the currency exchange? I am a busy man, can’t you see? So no, that will not do.”

Steve takes a step forward. Yazov’s papers rustle, and the man springs (hefts himself, favors weight to left side, Steve notes) to his feet. Ah. 

“But Lady Luck is on your side!” Yazov exclaims. “I owe our little spider a little favor. And I’ve found it bad practice to be indebted to things that bite.”

 

::

 

Yazov puts him up in one of his rooms. 

_The red room_ , he tells him, with an expectant smile on his sweaty face. Steve says nothing, and the smile slips. The man clears his throat. “Like I’ve said, you have caught me unprepared. Rest for a few hours. I will send up with food and my most beautiful girl for you.”

“No girls,” he says.

“Ah. My most beautiful boy, then.”

“No,” Steve says. He tosses his ruck onto the bed. His shield clunks inside.

 

::

 

He eats then sleeps for a very long time. He doesn’t dream. When he wakes, there’s a paper bag in front of the red door. Inside are tan boots, a marine uniform, a Department of Defense ID card (Jim Marlow, staff sergeant, is not an organ donor), a box of dark hair color and a can of spray paint.

He steps into Marlow’s skin and paints his shield black.

 

::

 

Steve sits in the back seat of the minibus as Yazov and the shady-looking marine captain driving trade quick-fire Russian and stacks of leu in the front. Steve doesn’t know much, but he knows enough to pick out when the captain says _I’d kill them all_. The marine meets Steve’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His gaze is pitying. 

“He can take you as far as Jalalabad,” Yazov explains. “After, you are on your own, _Staff Sergeant Marlow_. Welcome to the gates of hell.”

They pass through the sentry to Mihail Kogălniceanu airport. 

 

::

 

The lights are dimmed on the C-130 transport. Steve is warm and drowsy under his stolen gear. The marine shifts towards him and says in heavily accented and stilted French, “My wife died in the Triskelion that day. They tell me she died a hero.”

And, “What do I tell my children? When they ask me where she went.”

And, “There’s a man named Georges. He was a, a – how do you say— _handler_ for the asset. And a Soviet defector, like Yazov. He runs uranium through Torkham Gate. Kill him first, Yazov said. We’re even then.”

And Steve nods. It is a fair trade.

 

::

 

He ditches the uniform once he sneaks off base. He keeps the flak jacket on under a heavy sweater and wraps his face up in a shemagh, slips through Jalalabad in the dead of night, unnoticed, and makes it to Torkham by dawn.

He finds the man in a stinking village outside Torkham precisely where the marine told him he’d be. Georges, a fat and old and sun-darkened man, doesn’t scream or even bargain, just locks up his rickshaw and kneels in the dirt at Steve’s feet. He’d known the asset was dead. He’d known a storm was coming. Georges tells him everything he knows, though it’s not much. Steve supposes it’s a start. 

Steve respects his bravery, but despises his indifference. He shoots him in the gut and lets his Soviet blood stain the Afghani sand. 

 

::

 

A woman is waiting for him in Islamabad. 

Her name is Yana Petrov and Steve can tell she’d been beautiful, long ago. White hair escapes one side of her hijab and her eyes are gentle and almost smiling as she brings a thin cigarette up to her red lips. There are wrinkles set deep in her face, but it suits her. Once upon a time, maybe, a couple boys from Brooklyn may have asked her to dance.

“You’re not who I was expecting,” she says, unsurprised.

“And who were you expecting?”

“Surely you know.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“Then they were right. The American is truly dead.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That is unfortunate,” she says.

Steve pulls a chair out and straddles it. “Unfortunate?”

“Sad,” Yana amends, sincere. She crushes her cigarette into an empty ashtray and stands. “Would you like a chai, Mr. Rogers?”

 

::

 

“I first heard a week ago that a strike team had been sent out to stop the American, and had been successful. I found that . . . concerning.”

“Why?”

She fixes him with a searching stare. “Because of the expiration date, of course.”

“Expiration date?” he parrots.

“A cruel euphemism for self-destruct, planted in all agents requiring our programming. You see, after some time, Vasily Karpov and Aleksander Lukin believed, _no_ , became obsessed with the idea a failsafe needed to be in place should an asset’s programming fail. They needed a guarantee that should this system fail — and it inevitably would, because the mind is strong, and not so easily broken — a rogue agent could be safely neutralized.” Yana’s frown deepens. “It seemed better than the alternative.”

“So you engineered him to kill himself.”

“You must understand. The things we’d done to the American, we lived in constant fear. What if he woke up? What if he failed to report? What if he remembered? Worse even, what if he didn’t? He would kill us all. There was no doubt. To us, it was a certainty. So our team created the expiration date.”

“And how long before an agent _expires_?”

“Days, perhaps. A few weeks at the most.”

“The fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. happened months ago.”

“Yes, well, before Hydra’s acquisition, the American was always our strongest weapon.”

Steve grips his glass tightly, gloved fingers numb from the heat. His stomach rolls as the implication sinks in. “How—”

“How what? How could we?” Yana interrupts with a sharp laugh. “Why did the US build the atomic bomb? Because they _could_. And that’s just it, isn’t it? It didn’t matter if we should. All that mattered is that we could.

“It was the sixties then, we were brilliant, and we were quickly losing the war. So we learned to destroy the American’s mind and set a dead man’s switch in the empty spaces. And we measured our successes by his failure to remember you. And when the Union collapsed, Lukin sold his body to the highest bidder and we ran.”

She lights another thin cigarette, and offers him one. He has never smoked, but he has also never killed a woman, so he accepts the light. It will be a night of firsts, he thinks, as he pulls burning smoke into his lungs.

“Not a day goes by I don’t think about it,” she whispers, smoke curling around her words. “And I’ve done nothing to repent. I ran and prayed and I didn’t stop until I felt peace. I don’t deserve it, nyet, but it is what it is. So that is what you must do. Find peace.”

“And if I never find peace?” Steve asks.

Yana’s chin shakes. She is very obviously trying not to cry. Steve is glad, because her tears will not change the outcome of this night, and she knows this. “Then you never, ever stop,” she says.

Steve nods. They smoke in silence. He pockets the filter and waits until she’s finished a second. Then he stands behind her and places his hands on either side of her head. She doesn’t flinch.

“One thing you should know,” she says, voice impossibly steady. “Karpov is old bones in the desert, but I’ve come to believe Lukin is very, very much alive. Maybe if you find him, tell him I hope he burns.” She grins a watery grin. “Oh! And I think the milk’s gone over. Would you mind . . . ?”

“I don’t mind,” he says.

He snaps her neck.

 

::

 

There is a stack of personnel files in the icebox.

The milk is fresh.

For a moment, Steve feels regret. It is the last time he does.

 

::

 

_‘But she lived,’ Steve cries out, frustrated. ‘Why is that bad?’_

_His mother runs her fingers through his hair. ‘The girl realized she didn’t want to fly anymore, but it was too late because she already jumped.’_

 

::

 

He finds himself in Vietnam thirty hours later. 

The safe house is an old Vietcong command center, crumbling and rotten at the corners and slowly being taken back by the jungle. It is also obviously occupied. Hydra is as sloppy as they are vain.

The agents, he decides after a moment of thought, are all expendable. He smokes them out, shoots them all, and torches the house from the inside. A hard rain falls as their cooling corpses settle into the clay.

He’s walking through Hanoi’s soaked streets when he remembers he hasn’t slept or eaten since Yazov’s red room. He buys a night at a dingy hotel, eats bony fish and rice and shares a bottle of rice whisky with the working woman across the hall, and then he showers and sleeps. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember when he wakes up in a cold sweat. For this, he’s thankful.

 

::

 

A German-born, English teacher in Ho Chi Minh City manages to stab him in the neck and spit in his face. 

“One head, two heads,” are Fritz Cordes’ dying words. 

 

::

 

After Steve heals, there’s a metal worker in Vientiane, a strike team in Bangkok, a Hydra sympathizer in Manila, and a drunken assassin in Taipei.

He burns Petrov’s files and flies south.

 

::

 

The last file had told him the man he’s looking for is named John St Pierre, a brilliant S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer cum Hydra scientist for hire, a Melbourne resident and a law-abiding family man. 

It’s no easy task sneaking into Australia with no contacts and no papers, so Steve feels justified in propping his feet up on the man’s coffee table and cracking open a coke while he waits for St Pierre to come home for lunch, idly hoping his surveillance hasn’t led him astray. 

Steve’s not disappointed. At a quarter to noon, a key turns in the lock and the man shuffles through the foyer. Because he is a scientist and not a soldier, St Pierre doesn’t notice anything amiss until he spots Steve on the couch. Keys fall to the floor, much like his jaw. The man blinks slowly, frozen.

“You,” the man gasps. “What are you doing in my sitting room?”

“What do you think?” Steve polishes off the soda and slips the can in his bag, one eye on the man, because although he’s just a scientist, St Pierre isn’t stupid. “Do us both a favor, and don’t try to run.”

And the man does try, of course he does. He even makes it to the kitchen before Steve’s managed to crack his head on the floor.

When St Pierre comes to a few moments later, it’s wild-eyed and in a wave of vomit and piss. He struggles aimlessly against the duct tape bonds holding him to the chair. Steve fights the urge to cover his nose and mouth. He keeps his hands folded in his lap. Now is not the time to be squeamish.

“Please!” St Pierre cries. “You’re making a mistake! Listen, listen to me, okay!”

“Inside voices,” Steve warns.

“I have a family! I have grandchildren! Please!”

“And if you want them to be alive at the end of the day, you’ll lock it up right now,” Steve says gently.

St Pierre’s eyes bug out, a fresh howl caught in his throat. He goes quiet and very still. 

“Thank you. Now I need you to pay attention because this next part is very, very important. Do you understand, John? Nod your head if you understand.”

The man nods, spit hanging from his lip.

“That’s swell,” Steve says. “I need you tell me everything you know.”

 

::

 

Steve leaves St Pierre in a puddle of gore and blood on his kitchen floor. 

It’s a shame, really. The woodwork had been quite lovely.

 

::

 

A soldier in Auckland dies quietly, a spy in Samoa does not, a woman in the Cook Islands drowns to fund his operations for the next few months, and when he cannot find a general’s bunker on Niihau, he sets the whole island on fire. 

 

::

 

_‘God,’ Bucky says. ‘Christ, look at you.’_

_Steve kneels before him, watches in something like awe as Bucky opens himself up on his hand. Bucky takes him in his hand, takes him in inch by inch, wraps his legs around Steve’s waist._

_Fingers are combing through his hair, a hand on his neck holding him like a blessed thing, and Steve rests his head on sweat-damp skin, prays for a moment for all the things he might’ve lost and didn’t, and all the things he gained in return._

_‘Steve,’ Bucky whispers into his hair, pulling him in tight. Swollen lips find his in the dark, hot and slick and so familiar and Bucky’s eyes shine like he might be crying._

_‘Just tell me I’m awake,’ Steve says._

_And Bucky laughs and it sounds like a sob, and Steve feels it rumble deep in his chest and, ‘Yes, Steve,’ and Bucky’s fingers twine with his on the itchy woolen sheets._

_The night is cold and so very dark and miles away, he can hear bombing in the countryside. People could be dying and churches could be burning and it doesn’t matter because Bucky is alive and warm and beautiful and_

 

and Steve wakes up on a crowded train bound for Glasgow in a state of sheer panic. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. It sets his heart racing. The old, gray man sitting in the next aisle eyes him with no particular amount of caution or concern.

“You’re a loud dreamer, so says my companion,” the old man says.

Steve looks away, fighting for a solid breath. His cheeks are hot and streaked with tears. He wipes at his face, and hides in his hands and

_and calloused hands wipe the ash from his neck_

_and winter chill on soft warm skin_

_and I thought you were smaller_

_and Bucky grins up at him and digs his heels into his back and fuck I love you punk and_

“You’re fascinating,” says the old man. “For a human, of course. Tell me, Captain Rogers, what ever will you do once you’ve avenged your lover's death?”

Steve tenses up at his name and prepares himself to kill this man in front of a dozen witnesses, but his fingers fumble at the safety restraints, the lock jammed shut and

_and prayers hot on dampened flesh_

_and when the war is over Bucky we’ll never go cold again_

_and I thought you were dead_

_and rough fingers trace up his spine and teeth worry at his lip and I love you too jerk and_

The old man laughs as the train shakes violently into the station. He stands and looks down at Steve with a cold smile. “Perhaps when you’re done killing Nazis, you can give me a call. I’m sure I could put you to excellent use.”

He tips his hat and disappears into the crowd. The lock springs open.

 

::

 

He wipes a doctor off his shield and finds a nine-digit number embossed into the metal. He wonders briefly how long it’s been there. He digs his fingers into his temples, and then he forgets.

 

::

 

Steve’s running surveillance in Monaco when the Widow drops down beside him.

“Hello, there,” she says, and plunges a needle into his neck.

 

::

 

He wakes up face down on the carpet. He hasn’t been restrained. Rolling onto his back, he gives himself a moment as a wave of nausea and dizziness pass before sitting up. The Widow is perched in a dinette chair, shaping her nails with a metal file, very pointedly not looking at him. Steve isn’t fooled for a minute.

“You’ve been lighting a lot of fires, Rogers,” the Widow says conversationally. “People think you’ve gone insane.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think you’re hurting and you’ve lost yourself, just like I thought you would. I can sympathize.”

Steve ignores this sentiment. “Are you here to bring me in?”

“As if I could. And even if I could, where would I bring you? S.H.I.E.L.D. is in ashes, any good agents with more than two brain cells to rub together have gone to ground, and Fury’s completely dropped off the grid.”

“So why are you here?”

The Widow laughs sharp and cold. “I’d like to say I’m here to remind you that you were a good man once, and that it’s never too late to come home. But that’s not true at all, is it? Because people like us . . . people like us can never really go back, can we?”

“No,” Steve says. “No, I don’t think we can.”

 

::

 

“You remind me of _him_ ,” says the Widow, runs her sharp nails up his back, sinks her fangs into his neck. “The red room would be _so proud_. Hero captain fallen from grace.”

He kisses her fiercely, tastes copper on his tongue. She gasps for breath and trips him onto the bed. The sheets are cold beneath him and she is fire from above. He frames her face in his hands and breathes against her smooth cheek. “I could kill you,” he says lightly. “I could snap your neck and leave you here to decompose. Maybe I could wait a few days and call Barton, let him find your rotting corpse.”

The Widow pulls back slightly, bruised lips twitching in the semblance of a smile. She is not afraid of him. 

“You could try,” she says, and ever so gently digs into his flesh.

 

::

 

He doesn’t kill her, though he doesn’t know why.

The little spider is gone by first light. 

 

::

 

He finds his target is already dead, fallen from the hotel roof. _A suicide_ , a bellhop tells him. 

Steve looks sad and says he hopes his family is okay, because he remembers that’s what people do.

 

::

 

A boy in Poland knows his face.

“Hey,” the boy says, and tugs on his sleeve. “Hey. You’re him, huh. You’re Cap. Wow, you really are, oh boy.”

“Please let go,” he says.

“Oh wow, sure. No problem.” The little boy lets go of his jacket.

“Where are your parents, kid?” Steve doesn’t know why he asks. He doesn’t care.

“Taking pictures of some stupid statue. Oh man! Are you on vacation? What happened to your shield? Do you take your shield on vacation? I have one too, you know, but my big sister broke it when she sat her fat butt on it ‘cause it’s only plastic. And she’s dumb ‘cause she thinks Iron Man is the best, but I said _nooo_ , Hulk is the best and Hulk could kick Iron Man’s butt anytime anywhere! Hey, I heard the Hulk can shoot laser beams from his eyes. Is that for real? Is that true?”

“Yes,” Steve lies easily.

“I knew it. Hey, can I touch your shield?”

“Ah,” he says slowly. “I don’t think so.”

The dark-haired boy frowns and Steve’s chest goes tight. He’s not sure why. A young blonde woman waves to the boy, a heavy Nikon hanging from her neck. “John, let’s go!” she shouts prettily, clambers into a dusty Golf with a tall, thin man.

“I got to go,” the boy says, smiling again though it’s tinged with disappointment. “It was nice meeting you, I guess.”

“Johnny, c’mon!”

“Hold yer horses, lady! Can you tell the Hulk he’s my favorite? My sister says he’s no one’s favorite, but he’s _my_ favorite. He’s lots of people’s favorite.”

“Johnny!”

The boy groans and turns to leave, and Steve will never know why, after all the things he’s done and all things he’s yet to do, but he grabs at the boy’s sleeve and takes his shield out and the boy’s eyes go wide. “Wow,” he says quietly. “But why is it bla—”

An engine turns over. The Golf explodes.

 

::

 

“He stuck his neck out when we found him, let us bleed him out all over the floor. Didn’t even fight.”

And, “He always remembered you. We’d wipe and wipe and he’d always remember. He’d scream your name every time, when we took another piece of arm.”

And, “God, he was beautiful, he sure was, wasn’t he? A proper little doggy.”

And Steve gasses the bunker out, watches through a mask as they shriek and choke and wither and die. 

He dreams that night, the first time in a long time. Cool hands on his back, light breath on his cheek, _Bucky_ on his lips, and he is not empty, if only in this moment. He is warm and good and true. 

He wakes up feeling sanctified.

 

::

 

_‘Always look, Stevie,’ his mother says. ‘Always look before you leap, even if it’s for the people you love. Once you jump, you can’t take it back.’_

 

::

 

The call comes through in Cairo. He lets it ring and waits for the voicemail.

 _“Rogers,”_ it’s Stark, _“Look, Rogers . . . I, uh, I didn’t think it . . . listen, I wouldn’t be calling, because Romanov said I shouldn’t call because you’re busy finding Zen on a mountaintop or whatever the hell and I had to steal this number, but I fucked up. Like really badly. And I think we need your help.”_

Steve pockets the phone and turns back to Lukin and smiles.

New York can wait a few more moments.

 

::

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to this [glorious prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19994.html?thread=47839258#t47839258) (aka Bucky's death is Steve's super villain origin story) over on [avengerkink](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/). lbr, I don't think Cap would so easily board the crazy train to super villain town, but holy hell was it fun to write.
> 
> This wasn't beta-read, but I am looking for one; any mistakes are all mine! Also, my first MCU fic! Yay!


End file.
